Previous Patents
Existing Products
Potential Market
There is quite a large potential market for our problem. Plastic utensils are a very widely bought and used product in the world, especially in the United States of America. On an average day in the US, around 100 million plastic utensils are used then disposed of, creating an enormous amount of waste. Much of this use comes from school cafeterias, where these plastic utensils are often given out with lunches. As of the 2015-2016 school year, there were 98,277 public schools in the US, including high schools, middle schools, elementary schools, pre-k, and other designations. There were an additional 34,765 private schools in the US during this school year. Assuming that most or all of these schools were using the plastic utensils, each school used an average of 752 utensils per day . Now let's consider the amount of people enrolled in public schools in the US during the 2015-2016 school year which was 50 million. That averages out to 509 students per school. When we consider how much utensils are used every day, we find that on average, every student uses an average of 3 utensils every day. Now obviously, these numbers aren't totally accurate. Not every school has 509 students. Not every student will use a plastic utensil every day. Some might never do so. But these still do show how largely used these utensils are, and how many are just thrown out every day. The reason that schools mainly use the plastic utensils is likely to save costs, as these utensils are cheap to make and to buy, for example; a Great Value brand set of 120 spoons and forks costs only three dollars and 64 cents (plus tax). However, studies have shown that moving to reusable utensils is a much better move when considering long term cost savings, as when one middle school system moved to using reusable utensils and bowls, they accumulated $23,000 in total cost savings over three years, as well as preventing 6,712 pounds of trash waste. In another study, it was found that when the switch was made, food-ware costs per student dropped from $6.89 to $4.83. There is an extremely large potential market when considering all of these statistics, and it would be at least, but not limited to, the 98,277 public schools, and from there, the students, teachers, and other staff that work at each. This leads to a potential market of well over 50 million people who could use a non-plastic reusable eating utensil.
Sources
Market Research:
Source: https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf
- Cost of plastic utensils:
- Plastic utensil market is worth about 2.62 billion USD as of 2017, and was projected to reach 2.92 billion USD by 2025
Source: https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf
- As of 2015-2016 School year, there were 98,277 public schools in the United States. There were 34,765 private schools in the United States.
- In 2015, 50 million students enrolled in public schools.
- 40 Billion Plastic Utensils are thrown away/wasted on average every year worldwide
- More than 100 million pieces of plastic utensils are used by Americans every day. They can take up to 1,000 years to decompose, leaking harmful substances into the earth while they are breaking down.
- Americans purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year, averaging about 13 bottles per month for every person in the U.S.
- It is estimated that 4 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide annually. Only 1% of plastic bags are returned for recycling.
Individual summary
When researching Previous patents for our problem we began by using the many sources provided to us by Mrs. Zeinty. We found many of our previous solutions by using google patents including a utensil that could fold in half, and two with interchangeable parts. However these past solutions contained problems that would affect our target audience including the interchangeable parts being stolen, and the utensil not being able to grab and cut something at the same time. We learned from these prior solutions that our utensil should not contain interchangeable parts and should have a knife that can separate from the rest of the utensil so that it can cut and grab at same time. For our existing products we began by using popular websites such as amazon to find products that had already been created and were used the most by consumers. This research allowed for us to have an idea in mind for what possible consumers look for in a reusable utensil and what a current efficient utensil looks like. When beginning our research on potential market we began by finding statistics on how many plastic utensils are used by Americans a day, and the average amount of plastic trash a school produces. We discovered that around 100 million plastic utensils are used by Americans everyday, and only a small percentage of the plastic becomes recycled due to the inconsistent chemicals in plastic utensils. We decided that our market consumers would be school cafeterias due to the amount of plastics utensils they use a day, and how much the school would spend on utensils instead of reusable utensils. Our research was from reliable sources such as the Plastic Pollution Coalition who's main goal is to reduce the amount of plastic used around the world to create a healthier planet. Our Market research also included searching for the average amount of students in schools, ranging from pre-k to high school, and how many plastic utensils an average student would use allowing for us to calculate the amount of plastic utensils a school wastes. Now this calculation can't be accurate for every school however it gives us an idea of how much plastic is being wasted and how much money a school is wasting on plastic utensils when they could be saving money with reusable utensils.